Saturday, April 07, 2012

John Derbyshire's racist rant, preserved in full

It occurred to me that Taki's Magazine might take down John Derbyshire's racist rant after all the negative attention it has justly received. So I decided to cut and paste it here, to preserve it for posterity, so people can see the kind of things that racists say when they're being honest:

There is much talk about “the talk.”

“Sean O’Reilly was 16 when his mother gave him the talk that most black parents give their teenage sons,” Denisa R. Superville of the Hackensack (NJ) Record tells us. Meanwhile, down in Atlanta: “Her sons were 12 and 8 when Marlyn Tillman realized it was time for her to have the talk,” Gracie Bonds Staples writes in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

(1) Among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black, and whom I shall refer to as black. The cumbersome (and MLK-noncompliant) term “African-American” seems to be in decline, thank goodness. “Colored” and “Negro” are archaisms. What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks.

(2) American blacks are descended from West African populations, with some white and aboriginal-American admixture. The overall average of non-African admixture is 20-25 percent. The admixture distribution is nonlinear, though: “It seems that around 10 percent of the African American population is more than half European in ancestry.” (Same link.)

(3) Your own ancestry is mixed north-European and northeast-Asian, but blacks will take you to be white.

(4) The default principle in everyday personal encounters is, that as a fellow citizen, with the same rights and obligations as yourself, any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship. In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety.

(5) As with any population of such a size, there is great variation among blacks in every human trait (except, obviously, the trait of identifying oneself as black). They come fat, thin, tall, short, dumb, smart, introverted, extroverted, honest, crooked, athletic, sedentary, fastidious, sloppy, amiable, and obnoxious. There are black geniuses and black morons. There are black saints and black psychopaths. In a population of forty million, you will find almost any human type. Only at the far, far extremes of certain traits are there absences. There are, for example, no black Fields Medal winners. While this is civilizationally consequential, it will not likely ever be important to you personally. Most people live and die without ever meeting (or wishing to meet) a Fields Medal winner.

(6) As you go through life, however, you will experience an ever larger number of encounters with black Americans. Assuming your encounters are random—for example, not restricted only to black convicted murderers or to black investment bankers—the Law of Large Numbers will inevitably kick in. You will observe that the means—the averages—of many traits are very different for black and white Americans, as has been confirmed by methodical inquiries in the human sciences.

(9) A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.

(10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:

(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).

(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.

(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

(11) The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites. The least intelligent ten percent of whites have IQs below 81; forty percent of blacks have IQs that low. Only one black in six is more intelligent than the average white; five whites out of six are more intelligent than the average black. These differences show in every test of general cognitive ability that anyone, of any race or nationality, has yet been able to devise. They are reflected in countless everyday situations. “Life is an IQ test.”

(12) There is a magnifying effect here, too, caused by affirmative action. In a pure meritocracy there would be very low proportions of blacks in cognitively demanding jobs. Because of affirmative action, the proportions are higher. In government work, they are very high. Thus, in those encounters with strangers that involve cognitive engagement,ceteris paribus the black stranger will be less intelligent than the white. In such encounters, therefore—for example, at a government office—you will, on average, be dealt with more competently by a white than by a black. If that hostility-based magnifying effect (paragraph 8) is also in play, you will be dealt with more politely, too. “The DMV lady“ is a statistical truth, not a myth.

(13) In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.

(14) Be aware, however, that there is an issue of supply and demand here. Demand comes from organizations and businesses keen to display racial propriety by employing IWSBs, especially in positions at the interface with the general public—corporate sales reps, TV news presenters, press officers for government agencies, etc.—with corresponding depletion in less visible positions. There is also strong private demand from middle- and upper-class whites for personal bonds with IWSBs, for reasons given in the previous paragraph and also (next paragraph) as status markers.

(15) Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous. To be an IWSB in present-day US society is a height of felicity rarely before attained by any group of human beings in history. Try to curb your envy: it will be taken as prejudice (see paragraph 13).

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

You don’t have to follow my version of the talk point for point; but if you are white or Asian and have kids, you owe it to them to give them some version of the talk. It will save them a lot of time and trouble spent figuring things out for themselves. It may save their lives.

I may write a post later actually commenting on the rant. For now, it's enough simply to make sure that people are able to read this bullshit and see for themselves what is going through the mind of the American racist.

Update: As always, my Arbitrary Comment Deletion Policy is in full effect. I especially frown on comments that contain hate speech, personal insults, or incitement to violence.

50 comments:

"On the contrary, I believe strongly that the color of a man's skin or the religion of his parents is, by itself, no reason to treat him differently; that a man should be judged by what he is and what he does and not by these external characteristics. I deplore what seem to me the prejudice and narrowness of outlook of those whose tastes differ from mine in this respect and I think the less of them for it. But in a society based on free discussion, the appropriate recourse is for me to seek to persuade them that their tastes are bad and that they should change their views and their behavior, not to use coercive power to enforce my tastes and my attitudes on others." - Milton Friedman

Government creates legal rights in our nation. If government doesn't support discrimination as a legal right, tough.

Uncle Miltie's wishful thinking about "have no right to impose them" is silly on the face of it: why do we have a right to impose laws about property but not a right to impose limits to those laws of property?

Mike, it's "tough" that the government doesn't allow discrimination but it wasn't "tough" when it did allow discrimination? How convenient for your argument...or...the lack thereof.

I'm not asking for your views about what's tough or not...I'm asking what YOU believe business owners should have a right to do. Do YOU believe that business owners should have the right to discriminate against potential customers/employees?

It's not rocket science. You either do or you don't believe that business owners should have the right to engage in discriminatory practices. Which is it?

You know why I didn't ask you what the government's stance is on the issue? Because I already know the government's stance is on the issue. Everybody already knows the government's stance on the issue. Why would I ask you something that everybody already knows? Why would you tell me something that everybody already knows?

My desired rights align with the real, enforced rights of the civil rights act in large part. I do not desire businessmen to have the right to discriminate on the basis of sex, race, nationality, sexual preferences, etc.

And the simple logic behind it is that absolute property for one is unfreedom for all others concerning that property. The unfreedom can be minor, or it can be obnoxious. We routinely create exceptions for rights when they enable obnoxious behavior: hence libel and slander laws despite freedom of speech.

My problem is you. You're not willing to put your money where your heart is. You sit safely on your moral high horse rather than risk your own home starting a business to employ people that you feel deserve to be employed and serve customers that you feel deserved to be served.

Your pseudo ethical behavior is far more obnoxious than any discriminatory behavior.

Poor baby! You have a problem that I support this government program with my taxes rather than vote with my feet (as my ancestors did, and as I almost did during the Vietnam War.)

If your heart is in allowing businessmen to perpetuate a vicious cycle of hatred and discrimination that has reduced the liberty and equality of minorities for hundreds of years, then you are disgusting.

The discriminated do not care if they are assisted by risk-takers or the secure. Business does not sanctify. I certainly am not going to risk anything to meet your standards. You have very weird ideas about ethics.

You're the poor baby if you're too dense to realize that you just made an argument for pragmatarianism. Rather than almost running away from the Vietnam War...wouldn't it have been so much better to just boycott the Vietnam War? Why is it so hard for you to comprehend that taxpayers should have the freedom to put their taxes where their hearts are?

Oh I know why...it's because you're intolerant of other people's values.

So how is your pie-in-the-sky, utopian pragmatarian philosophy working for you? Pardon me for working with the real world, but I'm all to happy to observe you going to jail for tax evasion, or you emigrating to your favorite pragmatarian nation: is it Somalia? Go somewhere and show that it works before you expect us to drop everything for yet another one-trick utopian ideal.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who recently imposed a stricter curfew in response to the city's latest attack, addressed black youths directly from the pulpit of his church on Sunday, reportedly saying, “You have damaged your own race.”

"If you want …anybody else to respect you and not be afraid when they see you walking down the street, then leave the innocent people who are walking down the street minding their own damn business. Leave them alone," Nutter told a mostly black congregation at Mount Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Hmmm. And what of the black man who threw himself in front of a speeding train to save a white man? What of Jesse Jackson who risked his own life flying into hostile territory to free (mostly WHITE) Ameircan hostages? What of the black man who worked night and day in the aftermath of the Twin Towers' bombing and actually found people deep in the rubble who "regular" rescue workers had not been able to detect? Btw, he was controversially played by a WHITE man in the movie. For some reason it's apparently been hard for some white people to portray black people as HEROES even when they ARE HEROES. And you wonder why racism has persisted? Crime is bad -- regardless of who perpetrates it. But recent white on black crime included dragging to death from a truck and being run OVER -- by a truck!

This is racism but stifling this fool's free speech, no matter how disgusting one might find his diatribe, is equally offensive. In a free world it is import to hear everyone opinion. Keep the sunlight shining on him. Don't force him underground.

?! Free speech works both ways. People can say what they want, but OTHER people are allowed to weigh in! He won't be JAILED for what he said in our free society. But his boss can use free speech to speak the words, "You're fired!"

I'm pretty sure that Noah was doing exactly the opposite of "forcing him underground" by re-posting the rant. The point is to make sure that he's heard/read. Denouncing what someone says isn't suppressing his or her free speech; it's the opposite.

Am watching To Kill a Mockingbird on USA channel right now. Seems we've regressed since the film debuted in 1962.

This "talk" that Derbeyshire feels "non-blacks" have with their children is exclusive to a certain racially stupid set of Americans. Unfortunately, it seems that set is growing, rather than diminishing.

This was very funny... sad thing is that most "non-blacks" think like Mr. Derbyshire: there is a similarly small counterpart to the IWSBs which we could label the Tolerant and Non-Paranoid Whites (TNPW)

There has been a very serious and disheartening equivocation on the word "racism" for the past few decades. Historically, the term has had a specific denotation and connotation, namely: hatred, dehumanization, and attitudes that regard an entire people as inherently inferior or less than human. Because of this, we rightly believe that it's a terrible thing to be.

But a racist doesn't carefully specify that he is only talking about average characteristics and overlapping distributions. A racist doesn't think that people should be treated as individuals. A racist doesn't acknowledge that there are geniuses and fools among every race. But this is what Derbyshire did.

The reason we should despise racism is because it's foundation in hatred and dehumanization. That is such a far cry from John Derbyshire that it's not even funny. But so goes the leftist narrative; racism has retreated underground. Minorities continue to be oppressed in secretive and nefarious ways by white privilege and closet racists. In Nazi Germany, it was thought that the Elders of Zion were always acting in the background, doing all sorts of nasty things to the German people. How else could the Jews have risen to such elite positions?

Acknowledging genuine racial differences where they actually exist and proposing a rational way of dealing with the consequences might be "racist" in modern usage of the word, but it's hardly worthy of the contempt that racism has historically deserved, and it cheapens the legacy of real racism.

It's like all the people who throw around the word fascist (not realizing that fascism is a type of socialism). They have no idea what it originally meant, and how absurd it is to use the word in the present context, but over time it becomes synonymous with everything bad, so it's a nice way to silence opponents.

Shame on Rich Lowry and these other conservative wussies that let the liberals set the frame.

"Average characteristics?!?" By THAT "logic," women, who on average have better grades in school than men, are less likely to be incarcerated than men,and who are less likely to be a menace to society than men, should be the ones running things. Perhaps a few "exceptional" men could be allowed to take up token duty in Congress and academia and the like, but girls should be given a "talk" by their mothers that men are, by and large "inferior." I have a feeling "Derby's" wife may have had to already have that talk with their female offspring concerning their idiotic father! LOL

As far as your illogical rebuttal...I am a father and I would absolutely have a "talk" with my daughter about men, except it wouldn't be your version, it would be a little more thoughtful and pragmatic in the way that Derbyshire presented his words of caution to his children. There is a difference in being vigilant and taking wise pre-cautions to protect your well being and being racially pre-judicial where there is nothing gained.

One of the things I always find disturbing about everyday liberalism is that many liberals believe that the whole edifice is dependent on the exact equality of all races/genders whatever.

Why should this be the case?

Furthermore, if it were not the case, would all our humanism and egalitarian policy opinions change? I would hope not. Equal rights, and dignity should not depend on an IQ test and if it should turn out that in this world, that some subgroup has a lower IQ then to the sophisticated egalitarian this measurement is a case for the devotion of more public resources towards their welfare, not less.

One counterargument is that priming (and other) effects could make an underlying inequality worse, but I believe that unjustifiable discrimination, much like the poor, will always be with us and to acknowledge true facts and deny false ones will undermine the strength of their inevitably hyperbolic claims.

Of course, it is a marker of status to insist on mathematical equality in spite of evidence to the contrary, but perhaps on this online forum we can be more honest and deal with these kind of issues with humanism and decency without devolving into Stormfront.*

Well, if you take the fact that from this country's inception, things like the Homestead Act and other government programs of largesse were almost exclusively beneficent to WHITE people at the deliberate exclusion of blacks and browns, we can see how that institutionalized inequality led to expected(and at the time, evilly desired)negative outcomes for minorities. Wnen MILLIONS of acres of land -- and the tools to work them with were largely GIVEN to one group and barred from another-- one group is deliberately aided in progressing and the other is quite deliberately held down. Between 20-50 million white people are the biological descendants of those unequally benefitted "homesteaders" and many still have the assets to show for their ancestors' unfair advantage. Better nutrition leads to better cognitive ability. It's not rocket science. But I don't happen to believe in a man-made IQ test to "measure" ACTUAL intelligence, anyway.

I guess you can throw Occam's razor out the window and come up with any number of ad hoc explanations for subgroup X's underperformance by some measure if you want.*

But before you do so you should probably ask yourself why it's so important for you that mean symbolic problem solving ability be equally distributed across races.

It seems like you really haven't come to grips with what that would mean or why it's important.

(It's actually a lot of fun: men are in prison more often because of our history of oppression by the matriarchy, gays park poorly because of domination structures, men perform better at spatial visuo-tasks because the patriarchy has prevented women's eyes from fully developing through artistic self-expression, today's IQ tests are a conspiracy by the Ashkenazi Jewish-East Asian male power structure, Aboriginees never developed a number system before encountering whites because they never needed one because deities provided endlessly for them before the white man came and so on... )

Yeah we get it. Or at least I do. But I think it's just better not to talk about it. We don't know how much these things are culturally determined, and there are plenty of people who follow the facts you listed to very illiberal conclusions.

Yeah, as a would-be educator I worry about priming. Particularly if my thinking about these issues subsconscious impacts the expectations I have of my students and my delivery of content. I did not think that the effect of priming was so large as to merit silence on the whole issue which leads me to...

I never post at all in these debates (up to now). But I decided to because I'm a little surprised that no one in the blogosphere seems to have a position similar to mine, which seems like the *obvious* position to take for a progressive to take - as opposed to a position which seems demonstrably false to anyone who understands statistics and Bayesian reasoning.

Now for the risky part: as a white 1.5th generation American who grew up in a north New Jersey hellscape, Derbyshire's advice rings true if callous. Obviously, the specific numbers are nonsense (in particular, the guesstimate that 5% of blacks have "ferocious hatred" for whites is indefensible, and since I disagree with Derbyshire on most things, I feel no duty to defend the particulars of his article), which brings me to:

@Anonymous 10:46As a rationalist, I hate it when people are expected to deny their own "lying eyes." Experiences with prejudice, racism or the risk that group X seems to pose in certain situations should all be on the table in the liberal blogosphere.

I also tend to be of the admittedly optimistic opinion that a lot of the "illiberal conclusions" that people come to are the result of basic reasoning errors. Perhaps we can agree that the reason that certain knowledge about racial differences is dangerous is because the people interested in that sort of thing also tend to have violent fantasies, but we should refuse the choice our opinion makers offer us between the crypto-Nazis and the noble liars peddling bad advice about life in the inner city.*

Once unearthed, these facts cannot help but be discussed and a worthy appraisal and some hard thinking about these issues should come from our side.

I didn't want to rehash the same stuff. My follow-up was meant as a reply to kaitymar.

*Because I believe in keeping it real, I'm obliged to point out that no one who would benefit from Derbyshire's advice reads Taki's magazine (and most people who should take this advice, already do). The practical impact of Derbyshire's post was to start a conversation on the alternative right and feed some red meat to the racists.

I'm not sure if that's what he intended, but according to wikipedia, he is 70 and has cancer, so he probably doesn't give a shit.

Basic point: Who cares? Even if group differences are present, do we need them to predict who's going to be violent? If I look at a tough mean-looking poor-looking guy, do I think "Oh, I would have felt perfectly safe going up and talking to you if you were white, but since you're black, my theory about ancient African evolution tells me that I should avoid you"???

Yesterday - quite independently of this post - I searched the Internet to see if anyone had created an App to steer tourists away from dangerous neighborhoods.

It turns out that a few months ago Microsoft announced plans for a smart phone App to allow travellers to navigate around high crime areas. Microsoft was roundly criticized, by black leaders, on the grounds that the App would stigmatize black neighborhoods and drive traffic away from black neighborhoods. It is the black leadership which was saying that "high crime" is equivalent to "black".

There is a legitimate issue here for discussion even if Derbyshire goes too far. Derbyshire seems to be particularly wrong about one thing - most black violence seems to be black on black rather than black on white.

Derbyshire is also wrong that blackness is a useful predictor of violence given other easily observed individual variables.

For example, suppose we did a study and found that black people are 15% more likely to be have only one arm, even after controlling for other demographic variables like income and education. Suppose your kids wanted to avoid people with one arm (maybe they watched The Fugitive, I don't know). Would you tell your kids "If you see a black person, avoid him, because he's more likely to have one arm"?

No! Because you can clearly tell who has one arm just by looking at their arms!!!

And given your other indicators (primarily education but also implied economic status) you are at that point in your life where you are most likely to commit a violent crime - of course given those other indicators if you did commit a violent crime the victim would probably be an ex-lover.

I have seen no one respond to his facts with anything approaching a well-written, logical response.

Instead respondents simply jump up and down--like a whining six year demanding a thrived helping of pie--and shriek out ad hominum epithets, such as "racist."

No doubt,no one has tried to refute Derby because what he says is true. The facts he reports cannot be refuted, so there is nothing left to Derby's enemies except tantrums and censorship.

Allow me a few epithets myself. Any citizen that accuses another citizen of "racism" or "sexism" is evil. Also a bully. And, of course, an enemy of free speech. (What ever happened to that old saying,variously attriubted, "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.")

Well as Saint Paul said, the wages of sin is death. A lot of "liberals" now are complaining about Obama, who is ever-willing compromise away liberal principles. And who is himself most definitely a luke-warm member of the Liberal denomination. Those same folk now complaining were ecstatic four years ago because they had elected someone half-Black. Because of his race, they ignored his lack of executive experience and the fact that his only preparation for a difficult job was two years in the corrupt Illinois legislature and two years as a US senator. But, of course, no one will ever accuse of racial prejudice those who voted far him solely because he is a Mulatto.

Hi Noah! I know you won't print this. But I do hope you read it before you delete it.

My personal problem is that I have no party. Obviously I cannot vote for a party filled wityh Derbyshire's mindless censors. On the other hand, Romney is a crook and a liar; and the rest of the Republican candidates for president were/are silly clowns. God! how I wish I lived in a civilized country.

Key line: Suppose you see a bunch of rowdy-looking, tough-looking 18-year-old guys swaggering down the street in a poor neighborhood. Do you think to yourself, "Oh, if those guys were white, I'd go up and ask them for directions, but since they're black, and because I have this theory about ancient African evolution making black people more violent, I know they're likely to be violent, so I'll avoid them."??? No. No you do not. Because you are, hopefully, not an idiot.

Also, I of course defend John Derbyshire's right to spout racist bullshit. Are you dumb? I just reposted the damn thing. I reposted it specifically in order to show people how dumb it was, rather than suppressing it because I feared it was right. That's the exact freaking opposite of censorship, hoss. Use the brain God metaphorically gave you.

The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law," not "Noah shall delete no comment." If I made people submit each comment personally to me for review, and chose which ones to publish instead of which to delete, and called them "guest posts" instead of comments, you would probably not be complaining...

This is some loathsome, vile rubbish from Derbyshire. It leaves me with a strong desire to wretch and thoroughly bathe myself, ad nauseum. It reconfirms my low opinion of Taki, who has for decades traded in this kind of trash. Particularly odious is the bit about "IWSB"s as "luxury goods".

Wow, Noah. Thanks for both your posts. I'm surprised that merely reprinting Derbyshire's words would bring forth a slew of "You know he's right." You did call it a racist rant, so that was judgmental and maybe set some people off. Oh well. You second post was well-constructed and convincing. It had the advantage of being essentially constructed the way an economist might analyze, as if you constructed a functional model that worked as a reasonable predictive (if that's even a word) of how to estimate the likelihood of getting your ass kicked without requiring a racial determinant. Avoid gnarly people! Hell, there was a lot of virtual mugging going on in this thread. Kudos for engaging with the mob. I'll be back.

Thanks for posting the article. I had trouble finding it after it was referenced in a NYT article I read. I would like to believe it was a tongue-in-cheek April fools day joke, but it seems from comments I have read here and in comments in my local(Tulsa, Ok) newspaper following the shooting spree here on Good Friday that there are many of a like mind to Mr. Derbyshire.